In 1503 Kildare visited England by the King’s orders, and remained there three months. Having licence from Henry to appoint a substitute, he selected his old antagonist the Archbishop of Dublin to act as Lord Justice in his absence. The Earl remained three months in England, and was allowed to bring back his son Gerald, who had been a hostage for eight years. Gerald, who was accompanied by his bride, Elizabeth Zouche, received his appointment as Lord Treasurer of Ireland a few months later.[72]
Battle of Knocktoe, 1504.
In 1504 a quarrel arose between Kildare and Ulick MacWilliam Burke, Lord of Clanricarde, who had married his daughter, Lady Eustacia. The only cause assigned by any of the authorities is, that MacWilliam ill-treated his wife. He had, however, seized the town of Galway, and that might be provocation enough for a Lord Deputy. Two great armies were collected—MacWilliam having the O’Briens and Macnamaras, the Connaught O’Connors, and the MacBriens, O’Kennedys, and O’Carrolls on his side. With the Deputy were a portion at least of the O’Neills, O’Donnell, MacDermot, Magennis, O’Connor Faly, O’Ferrall, MacMahon, O’Reilly, O’Hanlon, and some of the Mayo Burkes, the Mayor of Dublin, the Earl of Desmond, and the Lords Gormanston, Slane, Delvin, Killeen, Dunsany, Trimleston, and Howth. Notwithstanding this formidable array of names, Kildare’s army was far inferior to MacWilliam’s in point of numbers. Both bishops and lawyers appeared at the council of war which preceded the battle: Art O’Neill objecting to the former and O’Connor Faly to the other. The one declared that the bishops’ duty was ‘to pray, to preach, and to make fair weather, and not to be privy to manslaughter;’ and the other expressed great contempt for pen and ink and for ‘the weak and doubtful stomachs of learned men.’ ‘I never,’ he said, ‘saw those that were learned ever give good counsel in matters of war, for they were always doubting, and staying, and persuading, more in frivolous and uncertain words than Ector or Launcelot’s doings.’ Lord Gormanston was unwilling to risk so much without first knowing the King’s pleasure; but Lord Howth, as represented by the family chronicler, saw that good advice might come too late, and that being in the field they must fight. He proposed that they should conquer or die, having first placed their sons in safety, so as to secure vengeance in case of defeat. This plan was frustrated by young Gerald’s refusal to retire. MacWilliam’s army made certain of victory, and spent the night drinking, playing cards, and arranging about the custody of prisoners. The battle took place at Knocktuagh or Knocktoe, now generally written Knockdoe, a hill near Clare Galway. Kildare is said to have reminded his followers that the enemy, though very numerous, were ill-armed, many with one spear only and a knife, and ‘without wisdom or good order, marching to battle as drunken as swine to a trough.’ When the fighting began ‘Great Darcy’—the man who had borne Lambert Simnel on his shoulders—appeared as one of the chief champions on the Deputy’s side. Kildare gained a complete victory. The ‘Book of Howth’ represents the gentry of the Pale as sustaining the brunt of the battle, while the ‘Four Masters’ tell the story as if both armies consisted of aboriginal Irishmen only. According to the former authority, Lord Gormanston made the following speech to the Lord Deputy:—‘We have done one good work, and if we do the other we shall do well. We have for the most number killed our enemies, and if we do the like with all the Irishmen that we have with us, it were a good deed.’
Galway and Athenry were occupied without difficulty after the battle, and the Lord Deputy’s Irish allies withdrew to their own countries. The arduous task remained of persuading Henry VII. that all had been done in his interest. Kildare sent his old antagonist the Archbishop of Dublin to Court, who performed his mission so well that the King professed himself quite satisfied, and soon afterwards made his Deputy a Knight of the Garter. Perhaps Henry was not really deceived, but thought it good policy to make his great subject’s victories his own. Sixty years afterwards, when Sir Henry Sidney solicited a garter for another Earl of Kildare, he urged his suit in these words:—‘King Henry VII. made his grandfather, and wist full what he did when he did so; he enlarged the Pale, and enriched the same more than 10,000l. worth.’[73]
Parliament of 1508.
Of the remaining years of Henry VII.’s reign but little seems to be recorded, except that the chronic war among the native tribes did not cease. Kildare held a Parliament in 1508, in which a subsidy of 13s. 4d. was granted out of every ploughland, whether lay or clerical. About the same time a party of the O’Neills took Carrickfergus Castle, and carried off the mayor. In 1509 Kildare again invaded Tyrone in the interests of his grandsons, and demolished Omagh. When the King died he was in full possession of the government, and without a rival in those parts of Ireland which were in any real sense subject to the English Crown.[74]
Henry endeavoured to separate the two races.
It was the decided policy of Henry VII. to act in the spirit of the Statute of Kilkenny, and to separate the English and Irish districts. The well-known name of the Pale, or the English Pale, seems to have come into general use about the close of the fifteenth century. A great number of ordinances remain to prove how necessary it was for the Englishry to bear arms, and the practice of fortifying the home district against the Irish became a subject of legal enactment at least as early as 1429. An Act of the Parliament of 1475 declares that a dyke had been made and kept up from Tallaght to Tassagard, at the sole cost of four baronies—Coolock, Balrothery, Castleknock, and Newcastle—and provision was made by statute for its future maintenance. This was an inner line for the defence of Dublin only, but the Parliament of Drogheda made a similar provision for the whole Pale. It was enacted that every inhabitant of the marches or inland borders of Dublin, Meath, Kildare, and Louth, should, under a penalty of 40s., make and maintain ‘a double ditch of six feet above ground, at one side, which meareth next unto Irishmen,’ the landlord forgiving a year’s rent in consideration of this work. The legal provision was afterwards enforced by writs addressed to the sheriffs and justices, and the name of Pale was perhaps first given to the district so enclosed. The building of this Mahratta ditch may be considered to mark the lowest point reached by the English power in Ireland.[75]
FOOTNOTES:
[48] History of St. Canice, by Graves and Prim, especially pp. 187 and 193; also Mr. Graves’s Presentments, p. 79; Archdall’s Lodge’s Peerage, art. ‘Mount Garrett.’